5 Jobs You Wanted as a Kid (And Why They Suck)

#2. Pilot

Why Kids Think It's Cool:

Basically, being a pilot has the two most essential components a child looks for in a job. Big machine? Check. Motherfucking flying? Check. Furthermore, if movies are to believed, flying a plane involves a lot of pulling levers, flicking switches and pushing buttons, and kids love that kind of shit. It's as if someone put wings on an arcade.

Why the Job Actually Sucks:

In general, pilots fly either passenger or cargo planes, which involves three stages: Takeoff, Landing and A Long Time of Being Bored, when pilots have to sit in a chair for hours on end and they can't get up except to go to the bathroom.

If that sounds familiar, it's because we just described the experience of everyone on an airplane. Kids hate flying in airplanes. In fact, every kid who has ever sat near us on a plane seemed to believe that flying was somehow poisonous, and the only antidote was for them to scream their friggin heads off for the entire six hours from New York to L.A. Kids, at least, can go to sleep or watch the in-flight movie; not pilots. Pilots can't sleep at all, and their in-flight movie is… the sky.

#1. Astronaut

Why Kids Think It's Cool:

Where should we begin? First you get to fly on the world's largest bottle rocket from planet to planet, where you meet all kinds of aliens. Remember, at the age when kids want to be astronauts when they grow up, they still haven't seen movies where aliens rip out of your chest or hunt you for sport. As far as little kids are concerned, aliens are fun and playful, like dolphins in outer space.

Dolphins who own ray guns.

Even if your child is a bit more practical and understands that being an astronaut is not the same as being a Jedi, all they've ever seen astronauts do is float around in anti-gravity, doing somersaults and squirting their food out of tubes before chasing it down and eating it mid-air. Astronauts are professional food fighters, and as we all know, they eat nothing but freeze-dried ice cream and Tang. That kind of nutrition gives them energy to do their jobs, like when they fly to the moon and perform vital scientific experiments such as golf, and jumping around like they're on a great big bouncy castle.

Why the Job Actually Sucks:

Because you need a Ph.D. just to do an astronaut's dry cleaning. To be an actual astronaut, a person has to be two-thirds Stephen Hawking, and one-third someone who has perfect vision and awesome hand-eye coordination. To make sure they have the right guy, NASA subjects their astronauts to an endless series of grueling tests.

Before they go to the celestial trampoline we call the moon, astronauts spend about ten years keeping themselves in peak physical condition while essentially taking the SAT every single day. Even if your kid's some rare breed of super genius who enjoys both tests and pushups, it's still not all it's cracked up to be. To give your kid an idea of what an astronaut's job is truly like, do the following:

Step 1: Go buy a van - preferably a 1976 Peugeot.

Step 2: Have the owner's manual translated into Russian.

Step 3: Tell your child to pretend the van is a space station, and that his or her assignment is to rotate the tires.

Step 4: Push the van to the bottom of a swimming pool. Hand your child the translated owner's manual, a toolbox and a balloon full of air.